The truth about marriage
“In Cana, Galilee, there was a marriage feast, and Mary and her sister Miriam, and Jesus and his six disciples were among the guests. The ruler of the feast had heard that Jesus was a master sent from God, and he requested him to speak.
“And Jesus said, There is no tie more sacred than the marriage tie. The chain that binds two souls in love is made in heaven, and man can never sever it in twain. The lower passions of the twain may cause a union of the twain, a union as when oil and water meet. And then a priest may forge a chain, and bind the twain. This is not marriage genuine; it is a counterfeit. The twain are guilty of adultery; the priest is party to the crime. And that was all that Jesus said” (Aquarian Gospel 70:1-7).
Elsewhere we will see that Jesus considered that very few people were capable of marriage in the real sense, that most people were just indulging desire and ego in some form, and that they were not really married, just living together in a dishonorable manner. Here we see the first of his teachings about marriage.
True marriage
There is no tie more sacred than the marriage tie. The chain that binds two souls in love is made in heaven, and man can never sever it in twain. Two basic facts about marriage–real marriage–are made clear.
- Marriage is a matter of divine love, not earthly passion, and it is undertaken only at the fiat of heaven for the purpose of fulfilling the highest spiritual karma: the furthering of the evolution of the man and woman. Married life is intended to be as dedicated and disciplined as any other aspect of the spiritual life. It is not for indulgence or whimsy, or to be lived according to the ideas of the world and society. It is to be as sacred and consecrated a mode of life as that of the monastics. For marriage is also a life of renunciation and total dedication, with no place for the desires of the ego. Who is capable of it? Very few, just as there are few able to be true monastics. Jesus is not giving this teaching for humanity in general. He is speaking only to Christines. The rest will have to muddle through until they awaken to the realization that only Christhood matters in this or any other world.
- The marriage tie cannot be severed. Marriage can be dishonored and betrayed–yes, sinned against–but it cannot be abrogated any more than the natural order of things, including the moral law innate in creation. We can dishonor our eternal relationship with God, but we cannot cancel it. The same is true of marriage.
False marriage
The lower passions of the twain may cause a union of the twain, a union as when oil and water meet. And then a priest may forge a chain, and bind the twain. This is not marriage genuine; it is a counterfeit. The twain are guilty of adultery; the priest is party to the crime. Through the ages there has been talk about “the battle of the sexes” and men accuse women and women accuse men of being unreasonable, thoughtless, selfish and unloving. That is natural, because Jesus says that an earthly, sensual, ego-based marriage is the joining of oil and water. The man and woman will really be at opposition to one another, two egos striving for the mastery. They can never be at one with one another, for their marriage is based on gender and socialization, not on spirit and striving for spiritual perfection. So they will remain irrevocably separate, isolated, even though living together. The marriage will either break apart externally (for it never even existed, internally), or be maintained as a prison for them both as their aversion for one another increases with the passing of time. A religionist cleric may have “blessed” their association, but it will will not be a genuine marriage, only a false appearance. “The twain are guilty of adultery; the priest is party to the crime.” This is a very severe pronouncement, but Jesus saw with a clear sight unknown to those around him. His words are true. The man and woman are just cohabiting like the lower forms of life. True humanity is also a rare thing, for it is the way to divinity.
The miracle of transmutation
“As Jesus stood apart in silent thought his mother came and said to him, The wine has failed; what shall we do?
“And Jesus said, Pray what is wine? It is but water with the flavoring of grapes. And what are grapes? They are but certain kinds of thought made manifest, and I can manifest that thought, and water will be wine.
“He called the servants, and he said to them, Bring in six water pots of stone, a pot for each of these, my followers, and fill them up with water to the brims. The servants brought the water pots, and filled them to their brims.
“And Jesus with a mighty thought stirred up the ethers till they reached the manifest, and, lo, the water blushed, and turned to wine.
“The servants took the wine and gave it to the ruler of the feast who called the bridegroom in and said to him, This wine is best of all; most people when they give a feast bring in the best wine at first; but, lo, you have reserved the best until last.
“And when the ruler and the guests were told that Jesus, by the power of thought, had turned the water into wine, they were amazed; they said, This man is more than man; he surely is the christed one who prophets of the olden times declared would come.
“And many of the guests believed on him, and gladly would have followed him” (Aquarian Gospel 70:8-18).
The first of the seven postulates of the New Age pronounced by the seven sages who had gathered to proclaim the Christhood of Jesus, was this: “All things are thought; all life is thought activity. The multitude of beings are but phases of the one great thought made manifest. Lo, God is Thought, and Thought is God” (Aquarian Gospel 58:17). That is why Jesus said: “What are grapes? They are but certain kinds of thought made manifest, and I can manifest that thought, and water will be wine.” Therefore “Jesus with a mighty thought stirred up the ethers till they reached the manifest, and, lo, the water blushed, and turned to wine.”
The subtlest element is ether, called akasha in Sanskrit. To change the water into wine Jesus attuned himself to the etheric level of water and changed it into wine since thought is the property of ether. Just as God thought the cosmos into existence, within it Jesus thought water into wine. Implied in this miracle is the truth that all things are composed of a single element: Divine Light. “God said, Let there be light: and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Since all things are essentially one, a master yogi can seemingly change one thing into another, but it is only changed in appearance–the object remains what it always was: Light. The best exposition of this is the thirtieth chapter of Autobiography of a Yogi.
Why did Jesus tell the servants to bring in six water pots–a pot for each of his disciples that were present? Because his intended miracle was as much a symbol as an actuality. Just as Jesus was going to change the water in the pots into wine, so his greater miracle was going to be the transmutation of the inner consciousness of each disciple from human consciousness to God consciousness–which it already was in essence. In other words, whereas Jesus merely changed the externals of the water, he was going to reveal the eternal nature of the disciples.
That which comes from the hand of God is always superior to that which comes from the hands of men, so the “wine” of Jesus was much better than any other wine that had been served. Those who have been “christed” have changed themselves from water into wine, spiritually speaking.
Seeing something as material as water being changed into wine, “many of the guests believed on him, and gladly would have followed him,” but there is more to discipleship than belief and groupism. It is transmutation, and rare are those who can even grasp that concept, and rarer still are those who will undergo it, hearing and understand the dictum of Jesus: “Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). For the “all” that must be forsaken is much, much more than mere material possessions and externals. Those who forsake all shall gain All.
Read the next section in the Aquarian Gospel for Yogis: Kings and Kingdoms